New “Drop” Trailer: Every Notification is a Nightmare for Meghann Fahy
A new trailer for director Christopher Landon’s Drop has, well, dropped, revealing a new look at Meghann Fahy as Violet, a widowed mother who ventures out on her first date in years and finds herself in the middle of a lunatic scenario that would make a lifelong single person out of anyone.
Landon’s film had its world premiere at SXSW this month, delivering plenty of thrills to a packed house in what Variety‘s Siddhant Adlakha calls a “pulpy mystery entirely sure of its own conceit” that “combines tech paranoia and the looming specter of abuse to create something surprisingly taut and entertaining.” That conceit is unveiled in the new trailer—Fahy’s Violet arrives on her date at Palate, a fancy restaurant to meet Henry (Brandon Sklenar), a handsome photographer she’s been getting to know online. Her 5-year-old son Toby (Jacob Robinson) is in the care of her sister Jen (Violett), so all Violet has to do is try to have a good time.
When Violet arrives, a good time seems entirely possible. Palate is an amber-lit, spacious place with gorgeous views of the city, an attentive if grating server, some odd patrons at the bar, and then the handsome Henry, who seems both attentive and kind. The set-up, with a stunning location and a large ensemble of slightly off-kilter patrons is perfect for the deadly games to come.
Those games begin with the titular drops that Violet receives on her phone, at first just weird but increasingly sadistic and then terrifying. Henry confirms that in order to receive a drop on your phone, the person needs to be within 50 feet, meaning her tormentor, or one of her tormentors, is at the restaurant. When a new drop shows a masked gunman at her home, where her son and sister are, the stakes are now unbearably life-or-death.
Violet is given a set of instructions that she must follow her son and sister will die, and those include killing her date, Henry. Sure, it’s a wild set-up for a thriller, but Landon’s assured direction and Fahy’s stellar performance won over critics at SXSW. As Alison Willmore at Vulture writes, “The core of Fahy’s agonizingly distracted performance is something real and recognizable.”
Drop arrives in theaters on April 11. Check out the trailer below.
For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
Producer Hsinyi Liu on Forging a Path From Taiwan to “Fleabag” & “The Ballad of Wallis Island”
Reel Returns: Connecticut’s Film Investment Fuels Economic Growth in a Competitive State of Play
Featured image: (from left) Violet (Meghann Fahy) and Henry (Brandon Sklenar) in Drop, directed by Christopher Landon.
